Comparison of 2 Photographs

Dorothea Lange was one of several American photographers for the Farm Security Administration (FSA), a "New Deal" federal agency that worked to resolve the myriad problems of displaced farm owners and workers during the Great Depression (Wood, 1989, p. 299). Under the direction of fellow photographer Roy Stryker, Lange and others (including Ben Shawn, Gordon Parks, and Arthur Rothstein) undertook a program of photographic documentation of the devastating effects of the Depression on rural areas to publicize the plight of farmers and their families (Wood, 1989, p. 299).

Unlike other FSA photographers such as Walker Evans, Lange was less interested in formal abstraction than in conveying a social message (Adams, 1994, p. 490). Lange was a social and poli

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been characterized as a "compassionate cynic who commented on the human condition with reasoned passion" (Janson, 1986, p. 783). The photograph recalls Gothic and Renaissance renderings of a pieta -- the Virgin holding the body of the crucified Christ -- but positions this subject in an entirely contemporary setting. The photograph depends upon a strong horizontal line of light that focuses the eye of the viewer on the supine body of the deformed child, floating in the water of his mother's bath and being elevated by her arms. Unlike Lange's informal picture, this composition is formalized by the posing that Smith undertook to position the mother as a supportive figure underneath the body of her child. The mother's face, seen in a strong half-light, is the center of the picture; as Janson (1986, p. 783) comments, "What engages our emotions above all in making the photograph memorable is the infinite love conveyed by the mother's tender expression." Unlike Lange, Smith used his darkroom and his developing skills to manipulate his final product -- shown cropped and posed, as opposed to uncropped and unposed in Lange's photograph. Tom Toth (1998, p. 16) has commented that Smith used such techniques as darkening selective areas o
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Approximate Word count = 1908
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page)

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